Maurice & Friends

Betty’s first visitor to Tanzania was her attorney, Bo Bonobo. She drove him from the nearest airport over uneven and rough terrain to her place on the lake. Bo held on diligently to the car door as they rocked along the potholed roads. He badly needed the drink she fixed him on arrival. They sat on the serene porch overlooking the glorious sunset on Lake Tanganyika. He had come to tell her that Shane was hedging on the divorce and get her take on the matter.

“He’s probably shocked that you initiated the action even though you asked nothing from him,” explained Bo.

“You can tell him I want it finished and done with, Bo.”

“Are you sure, Betts, you sure had a great love for him?”

“I still do but it’s time to move on. I can’t remain a basket case for ever.”

He spent two days in which Betty took him to the park where he met the wardens and a few of her relatives who marveled at the finely dressed Judge and attorney so similar to them in appearance.

Betty with Judge Bo Bonobo at a local vegetable stand outside of Gombe Stream Park in Tanzania....

After taking him to the airport, Betty was sitting on her porch absorbed in a book. She heard a leonine voice call, “Want to buy some Tilapia and Grouper?”

It was Tarzan, standing near her veranda with a canvas bag, a cigarette dangling from his lips.

“Yes, I think I do.”

She ran down the stairs and looked in the pack slung from his shoulder.

“There are two of them……big ones,” he offered.

She asked him how much and counted out the money from her shorts pocket. He took the Tanzanian currency and put them in his damp shirt pocket.

“Do you drink, Tarzan?” she asked in her friendliest manner.

“Not with bloody humans,” he announced and turned to go, striding through the pebbled sand.

“I told you, I’m an ape,” she called after him in amusement.

Betty’s nights were spent in writing and falling into a late bed. She would lie awake listening to the nocturnal sounds of the forested hills around her until sleep arrived, pushing all thoughts of Shane Simba to a remote corner of her mind until they resurfaced upon waking and seeing the crimson sunrise over the mountain edges.

Not hearing from Leah, Ashley Lyon, in touch by email with Betty, took her suggestion of using Judge Bo Bonobo for an attorney since Leah was a Simba and would use Simba Brothers law firm. He spoke with Bo and offered Leah a fair settlement but heard no word from her.

Shane Simba had received a hearty smack in the mouth. Not that he lacked female attentions after the word hit that he would be single soon. Females, both human and otherwise, sent mail and crowded the State House on flimsy excuses to meet him and get an opportunity to date with the possibility of being the next Mrs. Simba. Those who already knew him phoned and had to be screened. The angst came on the realization that the two females who had truly loved him wanted no more of him. They had abandoned ship, Jane for a life with Luke Leoparde and Betty for parts unknown to him. This was all due to the fact that he was less than grand as a love object once a female had hooked him. Oh the sex was great, the mind brilliant, the looks spectacular, the position glorious, but Shane Simba had his inner motherfucker working at full speed when it came to members of the opposite sex who were prone to idolize the lion president of Kenya. The recently uttered words of his daughter, Staci, rang through his mind.

“Daddy, you are not the nicest thing in the world to the females who adore you,” she had told him when he had asked her opinion on the nature of his wrongdoings. He wished now he hadn’t. Staci was inclined to be too frank at times. He spent many nights lying awake in the darkness, Johanna sleeping quietly beside him, and remembering Jane and Betty. He spent a great deal of time in self-examination as well. Shane Simba was a deep thinker and capable of introspection. He didn’t spare the whip as he castigated himself for what he realized were emotional cruelties involving his former lovers and mates. He emerged from the flames of his self-criticism with a new outlook and what appeared to those of us who worked with him, a mellowed aspect.

“Maury,” he said to me one day a few weeks after Betty had flown the coop. “If you can ask Lachlan to tell me where Betty went, I promise I will not harass her.”

He continued to hold their divorce at bay, not wanting to sign and finalize. Lachlan refused the information on Betty’s whereabouts as did Bo Bonobo who lied and said he didn’t know but merely had her same email address. Gloria, her sister, honestly didn’t know. He didn’t think of Ashley Lyon who had taken her there and was in constant touch as one of her main support systems.

Sam Simba threw up his paws in frustration at the refusal of Leah Simba Lyon and Shane Simba to bring to a head the cogs that had begun rolling at their instigation. As an attorney and a very precise animal, he disliked dawdling and indecisiveness. However, Sam didn’t fret long. With his house full of wall to wall offspring in addition to law partner and live in lover, Tawny Tigeres, he was a happy camper these days.

The dragging heels on the part of Leah Lyon were those of a kind heart and reticence where Ashley Lyon was concerned. She had loved him deeply and borne his cubs as well as adopted two more with him. She was falling more in love with malaria doctor, Trevor Tau, each day. Still, to end permanently her alliance with Ashley was beyond her.

The interest of Johanna Delacroix in the renovation and maintenance of the old section in Mombasa was not enough to continually engage the quicksilver intellect of Shane Simba with his increasing breadth of global savvy and comprehension. He breathed the scents of her exquisite body and partook of it nightly but her mind left him fallow. In his new determination to treat his females in a kinder manner, he continued to deal with her as gently as possible but longed for the responsive and brilliant minds of Betty and Jane. Sam would place a call to his office and urge him to take some action on his divorce but Shane would resist. Finally, Sam shoved it in the dead files until such time his littermate chose to act on it.

Shane and Johanna in the bedroom of his bush home

Ashley Lyon flew one of his seaplanes to Lake Tanganyika and paid a call on Betty to see how she fared. Betty, recognizing her ex-husband as he jumped from the plane and pulled it to a mooring spot, waded out to give him a huge hug. As she was clinging to his neck in the remnants of a bear clutch, she spotted Tarzan near the shore taking it all in with a mystified expression. Ashley had brought news from home as well as four bottles of good Scotch, cartons of Kool cigarettes and frozen beef filets from Margaux’s boucherie. He had also brought a small freezer which he drug from the plane, commandeering a nearby flat boat for transporting. This time, before he left, they had a fine sexual bout. No fireworks went off but it was satisfying, super friendly and cemented their amazing bond. He also told her of Shane’s inquiries everywhere (but not to him) as to her whereabouts.

With her original big love interest, Ashley Lyon, on the loose again, it was not long before Simone Serval began to hear the rumors of a Leah-free Ashley. She kicked the vacillating and noncommittal Alexander Simba out of her life and phoned her former love. He took the call and was pleased to hear from her. They made a date for two nights hence. Simone hummed to herself all the way to her detailed weekly beauty treatment at Paulette Poodle’s Beau Visage.

Shane continued his laissez-faire relationship with Johanna who was delighted just to be his consort whatever that might entail. She resided at his bush house where he came for long weekends. During the week she took occasional day trips to her home in Mombasa to check on her house and servant, Jalil. Shane was sexy, nice, charming and ambiguous, often appearing to vacate the scene mentally. His light eyes would focus on some vast area where no one could follow and see things only visible to him. Occasionally the couple would travel to Mombasa and stay in Shane’s elaborate home there. He would engage in water sports with Ashley Lyon, never once guessing that he had the skinny on where his wife was holed up. Ashley kept his counsel and enjoyed the windsailing and boating adventures they shared.

“I have some steaks my friend brought. I’ll be glad to share,” said Betty, one evening as she counted out the money for the fish from Tarzan’s day’s haul.

“Was that friend the lion I saw you with? The one with the seaplane?” asked Tarzan, exhaling a long stream of smoke in the air above her head.

“One and the same,” she answered gaily.

“Is he your boyfriend?”

“My ex-husband and my good friend.”

“Where are you from?” asked Tarzan with raised brow.

“Kenya.”

“Oh shit, I might have known it. That crazy place where lions marry humans and everything is as mixed up as a major league goat fuck,” he laughed throatily rearing his head back.

“Do you want some damn steak?” she asked impatiently not pleased with his bashing of her adopted homeland.

“Can I take a rain check?” he asked, his amber eyes suddenly serious. “I’d like a chance to go home beforehand and get cleaned up. I smell like fish when I come off this boat.”

“Of course you can,” she said, softening.

“How about this weekend? Saturday night?”

“That will be fine by me,” she concurred.

With that arrangement made, without another word he walked away in his supple lion stride, disappearing in the usual thicket down the beach.

Ashley and Simone’s coming together was a major delight for both of them. It was if they had never ended as a couple. Her pert humor and gamin looks recaptured his attention and his breathtaking appearance set her heart on fire once again. They fell into a heap on her feminine bed with the lace dust ruffle and had a time of sheer enchantment. At a premiere that weekend, the flashbulbs popped as the former president’s son walked arm-in-arm with the film star. Leah picked up the Masai Mara Daily the next day and saw her husband on the arm of the sexy Simone with the plunging neckline and revealing cleavage. Ash makes a beautiful bauble for a brain dead actress, thought Leah in a moment of uncharacteristic bitchery.

Ashley and Simone Serval at the French film premiere....

Shane Simba was at the same premiere at the request of Johanna. The film was totally inane frippery and not a product of Baboon-Simba Studios but a courteous bow to the French film industry contracted in Cannes by Bertram during the film festival in May. It was a subtitled and insipid costume drama which held Johanna in thrall. Shane fought to keep awake, finally doing so by focusing on a future trip to Kitale where the feuding farmers needed further soothing. He prayed silently that Jane would see it in her heart to cover the trip.

Later in the privacy of his bedroom in the bush house, they were lying naked with the ceiling fan providing gentle puffs of air. Johanna wanted to discuss the movie at length. Finally weary and short on tolerance, he pushed her head gently southbound on his muscled belly.

“How about less film critique and more blowjob, Johanna,” he suggested with his last shred of patience